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Masechet Berakhos Daf 2
Jan. 5th, 2020 07:15 pmDaf 2
Berakhos is the tractate of Talmud that discusses berakhos, blessings, invocations of God's name that are recited for various reasons and occasions. They're often recited before or after the performance of a mitzvah, they're recited to mark various ritual moments, and they're also recited to mark various non-ritual moments where we recognize God's place in the world.
The opening perek of Berakhos discusses the recitation of the Shema, and the blessings associated with it. There is a seder, an order of blessings before and after the recitation of Shema, as part of the daily prayer services.
What is the Shema? It's four sections of Torah that are a Biblical obligation to recite twice daily. It's called the Shema after the first word of the first section recited: Devarim 6:4 "Shema Yisrael, Hashem Eloheinu, Hashem Echad"- "Hear Israel, The Lord is Our God, the Lord is One." That verse is considered the fundamental statement of Jewish belief in God. The immediately following verses in the Torah describe one's obligation to recite these words "When you lie down and when you wake up". From here the Rabbis learn that you must recite the Shema twice daily, once in the evening and once in the morning.
This forms much of the discussion on the first daf of Berakhos.
I think it's worth pointing out, to my mostly not Talmud scholar audience, something obvious that goes unsaid when learning Talmud.
Devarim 6:6-6:8 says "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates."
We learn three of the most basic and elemental ritual obligations from these verses: the obligation of reciting Shema, the obligation of wearing Tefillin, and the obligation of putting a mezuzah on your door. But it's worth pointing out that these readings do not necessarily follow obviously. One could read all of this language as metaphorical. It's flowery poetic language, not prescriptive legalistic language, it comes immediately after the declaration of Shema, one could easily think the point of all of this language is not to say that you should tie leather boxes onto your arms and nail a wooden box to your door, but just to say that God's unity and sovereignty over Israel is something you should rule your entire life on, live it in your body, impose it on your household.
That is not the Jewish way. We have a mesorah, a tradition going back thousands of years, teaching the meaning of these verses and that mesorah says that these are specific rituals that a Jewish must follow in order to physically enact the obligation to remember God's unity and sovereignty. But I always feel like it's worthwhile to carry in the back of your head as you dig into the nitty gritty details of the Talmud's analysis of these verses that the most straightforward way to read them is as a really beautiful metaphor.
Something else I want to say here, since it is implicit and will be important in many places throughout the Gemara, is that this discussion hinges on the mechanisms of Jewish timekeeping. Microsecond accurate quartz watches did not exist back then. The primary mechanism of timekeeping on a day to day basis was the sun. It rose in the morning, it set in the evening, and the timekeeping system used in the Talmud works based on those markers.
So when the Talmud says an 'hour', what it means is that on this particular day, Sunrise happens at Time A, Sunset happens at Time B, and you take that time, divide it into twelve equal pieces and each is an hour. In the winter, the day is shorter, so hours are literally shorter. In the summer, days are longer and hours are correspondingly longer. When the Talmud says mid-day, it means the moment when the sun is highest in the sky, not 'noon' on a quartz watch. When the Talmud says mid-afternoon, it means you take the time between mid-day and sundown and divide it in half, so three Talmudic hours after noon. You're not doing subdivisions much finer than that, because the best tools you have for measuring these subdivisions are, you know, sundials, which aren't going to ever be more accurate than to a few minutes.
Also, sunrise and sunset are processes. The sun drops visibly below the horizon, but at that point it's still somewhat light out, there's still some time until full nightfall. There's no universally agreed upon moment you can point to and say "This is sunset", so you have to pick some moment in the process and call it sunset. You can say it's the moment when the sun drops below the horizon, you can say it's the moment in the process when it's completely dark, you can pick some moment in between, it's up to you. So the Rabbis are generally careful when they discuss these phenomena to define particular moments in the process as controlling, rather than to just talk about sunrise and sunset.
The Mishna discusses the evening Shema first, and teaches that it can be recited starting at the time at which the Kohanim went home to eat Terumah. R' Linzer understands this as resolving an implicit question about whether the time to say Shema is resolved based on normal principles of halachic nightfall as otherwise adjudicated in the halachic literature, or whether "when thou liest down" is a different timekeeping moment with specific halacha for Shema entirely on its own. The Mishna seems to rule for the former, saying that Shema can be said from when it starts getting dark, you don't need to wait until you are actually lying down to go to sleep. Much of the Tosafos on this page, is about the fact that in actual halachic practice, there are two evening Shemas, one recited in the evening as part of the Ma'ariv prayer service, and the other recited immediately before going to bed. Tosafos generally concludes, consistent with R' Linzer's interpretation of the Mishna, that the Ma'ariv Shema is the d'oraysa significant one.
The Gemara asks why the Mishna used a comparative time rather than an actual time in defining when you can say Shema: Why didn't it say that you can say Shema from after Tzeit Hakochavim, the time when stars come out. It answers that this way it taught two laws, the law of when you say Shema and the law of when the Kohanim went home to eat Terumah. Actually it teaches neither law, but R' Linzer says that the idea is that you can work out from context and logic or maybe from other mesorah that if you know that both happen at the same time, it must be Tzeit Hakochavim. I've spoken before about the idea of conceptual economy in the Mishna- the arrangement of the Mishna is careful to try to teach as much in as few words as possible, because page space was expensive, and I think also because cognitive space is expensive. You want fewer, simpler rules and teachings because it'll make it easier for you to remember the law and how to apply it in new situations. It's better if there is one common nightfall time that applies to a bunch of different ritual observances than for each to have a separate, separately adjudicated time where each calculation requires its own conceptual space.
Berakhos is the tractate of Talmud that discusses berakhos, blessings, invocations of God's name that are recited for various reasons and occasions. They're often recited before or after the performance of a mitzvah, they're recited to mark various ritual moments, and they're also recited to mark various non-ritual moments where we recognize God's place in the world.
The opening perek of Berakhos discusses the recitation of the Shema, and the blessings associated with it. There is a seder, an order of blessings before and after the recitation of Shema, as part of the daily prayer services.
What is the Shema? It's four sections of Torah that are a Biblical obligation to recite twice daily. It's called the Shema after the first word of the first section recited: Devarim 6:4 "Shema Yisrael, Hashem Eloheinu, Hashem Echad"- "Hear Israel, The Lord is Our God, the Lord is One." That verse is considered the fundamental statement of Jewish belief in God. The immediately following verses in the Torah describe one's obligation to recite these words "When you lie down and when you wake up". From here the Rabbis learn that you must recite the Shema twice daily, once in the evening and once in the morning.
This forms much of the discussion on the first daf of Berakhos.
I think it's worth pointing out, to my mostly not Talmud scholar audience, something obvious that goes unsaid when learning Talmud.
Devarim 6:6-6:8 says "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates."
We learn three of the most basic and elemental ritual obligations from these verses: the obligation of reciting Shema, the obligation of wearing Tefillin, and the obligation of putting a mezuzah on your door. But it's worth pointing out that these readings do not necessarily follow obviously. One could read all of this language as metaphorical. It's flowery poetic language, not prescriptive legalistic language, it comes immediately after the declaration of Shema, one could easily think the point of all of this language is not to say that you should tie leather boxes onto your arms and nail a wooden box to your door, but just to say that God's unity and sovereignty over Israel is something you should rule your entire life on, live it in your body, impose it on your household.
That is not the Jewish way. We have a mesorah, a tradition going back thousands of years, teaching the meaning of these verses and that mesorah says that these are specific rituals that a Jewish must follow in order to physically enact the obligation to remember God's unity and sovereignty. But I always feel like it's worthwhile to carry in the back of your head as you dig into the nitty gritty details of the Talmud's analysis of these verses that the most straightforward way to read them is as a really beautiful metaphor.
Something else I want to say here, since it is implicit and will be important in many places throughout the Gemara, is that this discussion hinges on the mechanisms of Jewish timekeeping. Microsecond accurate quartz watches did not exist back then. The primary mechanism of timekeeping on a day to day basis was the sun. It rose in the morning, it set in the evening, and the timekeeping system used in the Talmud works based on those markers.
So when the Talmud says an 'hour', what it means is that on this particular day, Sunrise happens at Time A, Sunset happens at Time B, and you take that time, divide it into twelve equal pieces and each is an hour. In the winter, the day is shorter, so hours are literally shorter. In the summer, days are longer and hours are correspondingly longer. When the Talmud says mid-day, it means the moment when the sun is highest in the sky, not 'noon' on a quartz watch. When the Talmud says mid-afternoon, it means you take the time between mid-day and sundown and divide it in half, so three Talmudic hours after noon. You're not doing subdivisions much finer than that, because the best tools you have for measuring these subdivisions are, you know, sundials, which aren't going to ever be more accurate than to a few minutes.
Also, sunrise and sunset are processes. The sun drops visibly below the horizon, but at that point it's still somewhat light out, there's still some time until full nightfall. There's no universally agreed upon moment you can point to and say "This is sunset", so you have to pick some moment in the process and call it sunset. You can say it's the moment when the sun drops below the horizon, you can say it's the moment in the process when it's completely dark, you can pick some moment in between, it's up to you. So the Rabbis are generally careful when they discuss these phenomena to define particular moments in the process as controlling, rather than to just talk about sunrise and sunset.
The Mishna discusses the evening Shema first, and teaches that it can be recited starting at the time at which the Kohanim went home to eat Terumah. R' Linzer understands this as resolving an implicit question about whether the time to say Shema is resolved based on normal principles of halachic nightfall as otherwise adjudicated in the halachic literature, or whether "when thou liest down" is a different timekeeping moment with specific halacha for Shema entirely on its own. The Mishna seems to rule for the former, saying that Shema can be said from when it starts getting dark, you don't need to wait until you are actually lying down to go to sleep. Much of the Tosafos on this page, is about the fact that in actual halachic practice, there are two evening Shemas, one recited in the evening as part of the Ma'ariv prayer service, and the other recited immediately before going to bed. Tosafos generally concludes, consistent with R' Linzer's interpretation of the Mishna, that the Ma'ariv Shema is the d'oraysa significant one.
The Gemara asks why the Mishna used a comparative time rather than an actual time in defining when you can say Shema: Why didn't it say that you can say Shema from after Tzeit Hakochavim, the time when stars come out. It answers that this way it taught two laws, the law of when you say Shema and the law of when the Kohanim went home to eat Terumah. Actually it teaches neither law, but R' Linzer says that the idea is that you can work out from context and logic or maybe from other mesorah that if you know that both happen at the same time, it must be Tzeit Hakochavim. I've spoken before about the idea of conceptual economy in the Mishna- the arrangement of the Mishna is careful to try to teach as much in as few words as possible, because page space was expensive, and I think also because cognitive space is expensive. You want fewer, simpler rules and teachings because it'll make it easier for you to remember the law and how to apply it in new situations. It's better if there is one common nightfall time that applies to a bunch of different ritual observances than for each to have a separate, separately adjudicated time where each calculation requires its own conceptual space.